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The two Fs in Fast & Furious 6 might also stand for “familiar” and “family.”

Yep, lovers of the F&F franchise will doubtlessly be pleased to see the whole famn damily reassembled, including Letty (Michelle Rodriguez), who was killed off in the fourth installment of the high-octane series but returns as the memory-challenged moll of 6’s super-villain Owen Shaw (Luke Evans), an ex-British Special Forces soldier turned international terrorist.

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The cast of old familiar faces includes Roman and Han and Gisele and Tej and Mia and Brian (Paul Walker), who once again plays second fiddle to Dominic Toretto (the follicle-challenged, gravel-voiced Vin Diesel). Even the villain, Braga, from F&F4 returns in a brief cameo. (Do fans really demand this degree of plot continuity?)

This time, the “family” — as Dominic refers to them repeatedly — is being offered a chance at redemption (a return to the good ol’ U.S. of A with their criminal records wiped clean) as long as they help Diplomatic Security Service agent Luke Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) stop Shaw from assembling a “Nightshade” bomb. (We are assured this would be a very bad thing.)

“It just doesn’t feel like home,” laments ex-FBI agent Brian, despite living in the lap of luxury on the Canary Islands with Mia and their newborn son. (Among the amenities offered: no extradition treaty and being able to race along Gran Canaria’s scenic but precariously narrow coastal highway at dangerous speeds.)

The team has gone increasingly international — Brazil, Japan, Mexico — since its humble beginnings on the mean streets of L.A. This time out, they’re off to London, which fortuitously has its own active underground street-racing scene, despite — we’re reminded — having more traffic cameras per square kilometre than any metropolis on the planet.

There’s plenty of shop talk for the car buffs who keep coming back for each installment — sequential transmissions, magnetic suspensions and twin turbo V8s, yada yada — as well as loads of inane dialogue in the form of macho trash talk and pseudo-philosophy.

To wit: “If you keep running your pie hole, you’re going to get an ass-kicking.” “You’ve really got to check that emotion. Your voice just went from Shaggy to Scooby Doo.” “Show me how you drive, I’ll show you who you are.”

Diesel delivers his usual deadpan performance, with an occasional horsey grin to break up the monotony, while glassy blue-eyed Walker seems content to play it as low-key as possible, barely registering on screen. The always watchable Dwayne Johnson delivers more brawn and bravado than the other two put together.

Unfortunately, Luke Evans’ turn as the villain is a tepid one, an example of undue restraint in a film where excess is the standard.

It pretty much goes without saying that the script by Chris Morgan, who penned most of the previous installments, is achingly stupid and beyond ludicrous.

Director Justin Lin, helming his fourth F&F project, seems content to focus on the car racing and action scenes. (He’s already bowed out on F&F7, to be replaced by Saw director James Wan, which is already in pre-production. And why not? The series has racked up more than $1 billion at the box office.)

That’s a bit unfortunate because there’s a sense of ennui and missed opportunities despite all the motorway mayhem, martial arts action, gunplay and a protracted ending that features not one but two climactic chases. Since we’ve all waited so long — more than two hours — couldn’t Lin have dispatched his villains in a more fittingly gory manner?

That said, fans are clearly more interested in car chases than character development and coherent plotting, and this installment is sure to satisfy their need for overdrive action. The rest of us are more likely to be stuck in neutral.

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